Welcome to Sons of Anarchy, the gritty tale of bikers, guns, white trash and brotherhood. If you liked The Sopranos, but wished they'd just drop the Italian-American thing and hop on some Harleys, then you are in luck with this show. Let's go through events of the pilot, shall we?

We begin with a blonde hunky-type riding a hog down a highway at night, with a close-up of his leather jacket, embroidered with "Sons of Anarchy" on the back. Cut to a rickety house, where an entire group of leather jacket enthusiasts -- their jackets say "The Mayans" on the back -- are stealing a bunch of guns from inside the house. Hmm, wonder who those belong to.

Cut back to Blonde Hunky-Type in a liquor store, thumbing through a children's book. He makes nice with some clerk he knows, buys condoms, she basically calls him a man-whore, advising that it's cheaper to just buy those things in bulk, but as she's kindly giving him a free children's book, she notices a giant explosion about a half-mile away. This upsets Blonde Hunky-Type, who quickly runs out of the store.

Now we're looking at the back of several Sons of Anarchy jackets on bikes, entering a town called Charming. They pull up to the remains of last night's explosion at the same time a San Joaquin Valley sheriff deputy is checking out the scene. The leader of the gang, who is played by Ron Perlman, clearly has this deputy on the payroll. He exclaims, "What the hell happened?!" Like it's the deputy's fault. The deputy tells them it was arson and that all the guns are gone (even the M-4s!), and the biggest, burliest Son says it was the "Sh*t-eating Mayans." Excellent guess. Just as they pay the deputy his salary for keeping the heat off of them for owning the house and ammo inside that exploded, he opens a secret hatch, in dramatic John Locke fashion, where two mystery ladies are folded up nicely, burned to a crisp. Everyone's like, oh man, we're in trouble now! Blonde Hunky-Type tells Ron Perlman it ain't easy being king. Ron Perlman (whose character is named "Clay," according to IMdb) tells him to remember that, and the opening credits roll.

Back from the credits! We're at a bike lot, where the Sons are trying to get a deer carcass out of a car windshield. We meet two more members of the gang -- one is the Scottish guy with the scar on his face from Braveheart, and the other is a little wimpy kid they give crap to for being a vegetarian. The latter is charged with sawing the deer in half and prying it out of the car.

Continue reading this entry on Television Without Pity.